Houston man says divine intervention kept him off doomed flight

Carol Christia, Houston Chronicle

By Carol Christian

Updated 10:05 am, Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Houston man whose heavy international travel schedule had him booked on Malaysia Airlines' ill-fated Flight 370 says his decision to cancel the trip was divine intervention.
Greg Candelaria, who works in global technology services for IBM, said he was booked on the March 7/8 flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing to conduct training this week in China.

A Houston man whose hectic travel schedule had him booked on the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is calling a decision to cancel his overseas trip divine intervention.

Greg Candelaria, who works in global technology services for IBM, said he was booked on the March 7/8 flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing to oversee training this week in China.

About three weeks ago, however, he decided to cancel the trip since it was coming on the heels of a stop in Japan and "eight solid days" of training in Spain.

"I said, 'I'm getting too old for this,'" said Candelaria, 57.

The fact that he's at home in Houston with his wife, Brooke, instead of missing in the Gulf of Thailand, is a gift from God, Candelaria said by phone Monday.

"Some would call this luck," he said. "I would absolutely consider it 100 percent the grace of God. Now, several days into this, it's still kind of a goose-bump freaky kind of thing."

A news alert on his cellphone Friday night first alerted Canderlaria that the plane was missing. He said he got the news while finishing dinner with his wife at El Real Restaurant on Westheimer.

"We freaked out," he said. "Brooke lost all the color in her face, and a waiter who knows us well came over and said, 'Are you all right?'"

The couple was processing two realizations, Canderlaria said: "Wow, I think that's the plane I was supposed to be on," and "Oh no, my colleagues may be on that flight."

Canderlaria got a phone call from one of his co-workers late Friday night letting him know he was OK. About an hour later, he got an e-mail from another.

Three of Candelaria's co-workers who were scheduled to spend the week training in China went ahead, but ended up taking different flights from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Two were on the plane that left just before Flight 370, but one man's luggage was delayed and presumably went down with the lost plane, Candelaria said.

Candelaria said he thought long about the cancelation because one of his three adult daughters is in China now to adopt a child.

"I would have got to meet my brand new granddaughter this week in Beijing," he said. "That tells you how tired I was."

In his 30 years and about 4 million miles of flying, Candelaria said this is the only flight he's been scheduled on that went down.

"It's a little humbling and chilling," he said. "I don't know what it might mean. Perhaps this is a moment to reconsider all I'm doing in my life and do more for others."